Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Nymrohd]

Isn't anyone els frustrated with the blatant cut-paste of the Haranir zone from TWW to Midnight? It feels so out of place there and of course only accessible through portals, while it could have been added seamlessly in the TWW underground continent instead of the random kharesh zone.

It feels like Kharesh was meant to be one of midnight's climaxes, I mean the full theme and colors of that zone are 100% midnight's, but it feels blizzard just got bored with the void theme and story so it shoved it in TWW to be quickly done with it and focus on evil Light in the suposed void expansion for some reason.

I could have easily seen Xal cause the Voidstorm to feed Dimensius with K'aresh and the Voidstorm being the third and fourth zone of the expansion. Omega would be the first raid and at the end of it the same thing would happen; Xal would swoop in and absorb Dimensius in the Dark Heart, usurping his power.

Locus Walker could have been hostile to her throughout with her being an antagonist alongside Salhadar and then at the end, he uses the Ribbons to fully contain Dimensius only for her to kill him and absorb the weakened Void Lord in the Dark Heart. He would have been more of a hero instead of trusting her.

[Bozzoltank]

Isn't anyone els frustrated with the blatant cut-paste of the Haranir zone from TWW to Midnight? It feels so out of place there and of course only accessible through portals, while it could have been added seamlessly in the TWW underground continent instead of the random kharesh zone.

It feels like Kharesh was meant to be one of midnight's climaxes, I mean the full theme and colors of that zone are 100% midnight's, but it feels blizzard just got bored with the void theme and story so it shoved it in TWW to be quickly done with it and focus on evil Light in the suposed void expansion for some reason.

It's quite frustrating, yes! We could've had a more developed K'aresh or Voidstorm as a leveling zone for Midnight. I don't dislike what they're tackling with Harandar; the Rift of Aln, the convergence of the roots of the World Trees and Azeroth's cradle, but it's thematically just wildly out of place.

Do the Voidstorm and Harandar have a dynamic loading screen, or is it just a proper loading screen like K'aresh and Undermine?

[Super Dickmann]

Isn't anyone els frustrated with the blatant cut-paste of the Haranir zone from TWW to Midnight? It feels so out of place there and of course only accessible through portals, while it could have been added seamlessly in the TWW underground continent instead of the random kharesh zone.

It feels like Kharesh was meant to be one of midnight's climaxes, I mean the full theme and colors of that zone are 100% midnight's, but it feels blizzard just got bored with the void theme and story so it shoved it in TWW to be quickly done with it and focus on evil Light in the suposed void expansion for some reason.

TWW, like its predecessor about the planet crying out in pain about its open woons, has its story kept together with strings. Much like BFA, major plot beats and even the starting premise (go down to the core of Azeroth to stop the bad lady) are abruptly pivoted from to go to a purple alternate dimension in the last patch where a mysterious figure hands out cloaks. While TWW is nowhere close to as atrociously written and K'aresh is story-wise easily one of the better ones they've done lately, it still barely holds together, with most elements from the first patch except the Arathi being completely irrelevant and the Black Blood, the whole thing the first two patches rotated about being abruptly dumped halfway through, only for its aesthetic to appear in a completely unrelated context (Voidstorm).

My conspiracy is that Harandar and the Voidstorm fleshy-bits and their zerg, along with the bug models from K'aresh that completely clash with the aesthetic were originally part of one zone, which was the worldcore. That's why many, like the void flyers and Dehaka don't really fit at all with the blue ghost design the rest of Xal's forces but are instead developed off of the ascended nerubians have got going and why the corruption of the earth that Orweyna spent her entire screentime going on about abruptly vanishes when we actually get to the zone and we're actually dealing with holy roots.

[Darkarath]

Isn't anyone els frustrated with the blatant cut-paste of the Haranir zone from TWW to Midnight? It feels so out of place there and of course only accessible through portals, while it could have been added seamlessly in the TWW underground continent instead of the random kharesh zone.

It feels like Kharesh was meant to be one of midnight's climaxes, I mean the full theme and colors of that zone are 100% midnight's, but it feels blizzard just got bored with the void theme and story so it shoved it in TWW to be quickly done with it and focus on evil Light in the suposed void expansion for some reason.

Yeah I'll wait to pass judgment until I see what else we get in Midnight's livespan.

I'm excited for Harandar but I agree that it would have been much better as a zone that we can naturally access from Khaz Algar, and not another fucking portal.

I'm getting really sick of instanced zones.

At least we have QT in the main map now, which IMO is a clear sign that all EK eventually will be a nice and beautiful revamped continent

[Biomega]

Isn't anyone els frustrated with the blatant cut-paste of the Haranir zone from TWW to Midnight? It feels so out of place there and of course only accessible through portals, while it could have been added seamlessly in the TWW underground continent instead of the random kharesh zone.

It feels like Kharesh was meant to be one of midnight's climaxes, I mean the full theme and colors of that zone are 100% midnight's, but it feels blizzard just got bored with the void theme and story so it shoved it in TWW to be quickly done with it and focus on evil Light in the suposed void expansion for some reason.

I suspect that's exactly what happened: Haranir were supposed to be in TWW, and K'aresh was supposed to be in MID. Then something happened (we don't know what) and they decided to swap them, putting a half-finished K'aresh into TWW (hence the somewhat lackluster amount of content there) and adding Haranir as a MID feature.

What exactly prompted this is hard to say, but it could be anything from them feeling MID didn't have enough content without a new race to them feeling there wasn't a big enough climax in TWW without a serious baddie to them rearranging the story and realizing it works better if Xal eats Dimensius first. Who knows.

But it definitely feels BIG TIME like those two things are just in the wrong expansion, respectively.

[Lady Atia]

Isn't anyone els frustrated with the blatant cut-paste of the Haranir zone from TWW to Midnight? It feels so out of place there and of course only accessible through portals, while it could have been added seamlessly in the TWW underground continent instead of the random kharesh zone.

It feels like Kharesh was meant to be one of midnight's climaxes, I mean the full theme and colors of that zone are 100% midnight's, but it feels blizzard just got bored with the void theme and story so it shoved it in TWW to be quickly done with it and focus on evil Light in the suposed void expansion for some reason.

Stop thinking in expansion terms, it's basically one expansion spread out over three old ones, with each patch being it's own "mini expansion".

For years we wanted them to commit to a living world were they can update stuff in the old world and do zones without being shackeled to "this has to fit our 3 patch expansion" thinking, and now people hate it and want the boring "everything is purple/green/yellow" expansions back or what?

[allegrian]

TWW, like its predecessor about the planet crying out in pain about its open woons, has its story kept together with strings. Much like BFA, major plot beats and even the starting premise (go down to the core of Azeroth to stop the bad lady) are abruptly pivoted from to go to a purple alternate dimension in the last patch where a mysterious figure hands out cloaks. While TWW is nowhere close to as atrociously written and K'aresh is story-wise easily one of the better ones they've done lately, it still barely holds together, with most elements from the first patch except the Arathi being completely irrelevant and the Black Blood, the whole thing the first two patches rotated about being abruptly dumped halfway through, only for its aesthetic to appear in a completely unrelated context (Voidstorm).

My conspiracy is that Harandar and the Voidstorm fleshy-bits and their zerg, along with the bug models from K'aresh that completely clash with the aesthetic were originally part of one zone, which was the worldcore. That's why many, like the void flyers and Dehaka don't really fit at all with the blue ghost design the rest of Xal's forces but are instead developed off of the ascended nerubians have got going and why the corruption of the earth that Orweyna spent her entire screentime going on about abruptly vanishes when we actually get to the zone and we're actually dealing with holy roots.

As voice acting and pre-rendered cinematics are planned and done with advance, I feel that Orwenya's quests in the undermine prologue (11.1.7 I think) show what was originally planned, which was having the black blood as an important threat to the world core where harandar was, as well as goblins tunneling near harandar or the world core and the last patch would've been harandar, where the world soul actually is (that's why azeroth magic went through amirdrassil to bless the aspects) but itss trapped by the titan's bindings and the black blood is corrupting it alongside the trees.

It was all dropped to make harandar about light corruption for some reason and the place where the world soul was initally but not anymore, as metzen changed it to be closer to Ulduar for TLT.

In the end, If we see the 3 expansion world soul saga as a 3 patch expansion like DF and TWW, it feels like the middle part is always filler (Aberrus, Undermine, maybe Ataluek), so Midnight is the filler story in the trilogy.

- - - Updated - - -

Stop thinking in expansion terms, it's basically one expansion spread out over three old ones, with each patch being it's own "mini expansion".

For years we wanted them to commit to a living world were they can update stuff in the old world and do zones without being shackeled to "this has to fit our 3 patch expansion" thinking, and now people hate it and want the boring "everything is purple/green/yellow" expansions back or what?

The problem is that it was changed from making sense to the overall WSS and TWW expansion story to feel completely unrelated and irrelevant to the main plot.

[Pyrophax]

Isn't anyone els frustrated with the blatant cut-paste of the Haranir zone from TWW to Midnight? It feels so out of place there and of course only accessible through portals, while it could have been added seamlessly in the TWW underground continent instead of the random kharesh zone.

It feels like Kharesh was meant to be one of midnight's climaxes, I mean the full theme and colors of that zone are 100% midnight's, but it feels blizzard just got bored with the void theme and story so it shoved it in TWW to be quickly done with it and focus on evil Light in the suposed void expansion for some reason.

I think originaly Harandar (Rootlands) was 11.2 zone at TWW. That time nothing like WSS was never an option. I believe at Rootlands we should have deal with Black Blood thing with amalgamation of Old Gods powers or even N'Zoth fueled by black blood. Then in next expansion we get Xal in a role of Gul'Dan from Legion - last boss of initial patch of expansion; K'Aresh should have been 12.2 patch zone, where we deal with Dimensius as last boss and closing Void threat.
But then things changed - patches were mixed, we got this mess - K'Aresh as 11.2 zone, Harandar and Xal as last boss of Midnight (?).

[allegrian]

I think originaly Harandar (Rootlands) was 11.2 zone at TWW. That time nothing like WSS was never an option. I believe at Rootlands we should have deal with Black Blood thing with amalgamation of Old Gods powers or even N'Zoth fueled by black blood. Then in next expansion we get Xal in a role of Gul'Dan from Legion - last boss of initial patch of expansion; K'Aresh should have been 12.2 patch zone, where we deal with Dimensius as last boss and closing Void threat.
But then things changed - patches were mixed, we got this mess - K'Aresh as 11.2 zone, Harandar and Xal as last boss of Midnight (?).

This makes sense. Xalatath was set up as the harbinger of the void and Dimensius pawn, typical from danuser who did the same with Sylvannas and the Jailer.

I guess that planning and early art for dimensius and kharesh was already underway and they didn't want to fully discard it.

[Lady Atia]

This makes sense. Xalatath was set up as the harbinger of the void and Dimensius pawn, typical from danuser who did the same with Sylvannas and the Jailer.

I guess that planning and early art for dimensius and kharesh was already underway and they didn't want to fully discard it.

Idk, Xal as Silver Surver who was a former mortal trying to fight back against her masters would have worked better than "Xal was a random void being, and the void lords are suddenly no longer a thing because dimensius ate them .... and .... yeah now Xal wants to eat him too".

[Elronas16]

I still remember how awesome Meztzen made everything sound when he presented the saga on stage.

Fast forward and it turned out to be their biggest turd yet.

[Auxis]

I think the root cause of the Black blood goes way deeper in the earth than where the rootlands were if we based it solely on the roots in the ceiling of the Hallowfall/Azj-kahet tunnel being where Harandar originally was.

Black Blood is below the Palace and I'm pretty sure it goes deeper than that if memory serves based on drop offs visible in the distance (or I could be mixing it up with Excavation Site 9 delve which is vertically higher than the Palace...).

[Nymrohd]

I am now imagining a zone with a sea of blood and the World Soul barely floating above it and it looks pretty damn cool.

[Vakir]

Agreed, maybe the hero specs can be flavored over various tinkering races? Gnome/Goblin/Draenei, wildcard Mag'har/Iron Horde.

This is the way.

Hero Talents aren't spectacular or anything but they are better at the flavor process and there's a lot to work with there for subtypes of tech without requiring an insane amount of new assets for every race.

- - - Updated - - -

I still remember how awesome Meztzen made everything sound when he presented the saga on stage.

Fast forward and it turned out to be their biggest turd yet.

This is not even close to the biggest turd yet relative to BFA lore and SL.

Or even WoD's timing as a hard left from the clear Legion threat trajectory even if conceptually it's not a bad idea.

[Houle]

This is not even close to the biggest turd yet relative to BFA lore and SL.

Or even WoD's timing as a hard left from the clear Legion threat trajectory even if conceptually it's not a bad idea.

WoD, aka the "Warcraft movie side piece" xpac.

[allegrian]

I still remember how awesome Meztzen made everything sound when he presented the saga on stage.

Fast forward and it turned out to be their biggest turd yet.

He even made the war within sound epic in the last online presentation.

[Super Dickmann]

As voice acting and pre-rendered cinematics are planned and done with advance, I feel that Orwenya's quests in the undermine prologue (11.1.7 I think) show what was originally planned, which was having the black blood as an important threat to the world core where harandar was, as well as goblins tunneling near harandar or the world core and the last patch would've been harandar, where the world soul actually is (that's why azeroth magic went through amirdrassil to bless the aspects) but itss trapped by the titan's bindings and the black blood is corrupting it alongside the trees.

It was all dropped to make harandar about light corruption for some reason and the place where the world soul was initally but not anymore, as metzen changed it to be closer to Ulduar for TLT.

I see why they did it. As you yourself point out and as is obvious, Dimensius wouldn't work as a lasting baddie. Like Argus, the Bald Man and even Sargeras himself he's just another large man. His saving grace was that he was played as a mostly quiet force of nature rather than a schemer. That and his name is silly. In service of this and also to follow up on the popularity of ethereal requests, they moved it here. They also did this to avert the issue of an expansion that's all blue and purple. K'aresh into some Voidstorm variant would have the same energy of Tomb of Sargeras transitioning into Antorus and indeed, the entire visually dry move from Broken Shore to Argus.

That said, it's had the side-effect of putting us, short some nice stories and character focus in effectively the same place we started. At the start of TWW Xal had the Dark Heart and was primed to implement her evil plan using her cosmic power. At the end, the same is the case, except what's in the disc is different and Locus-Walker is dead. TWW did favors for her and Alleria they wouldn't otherwise have had, but not enough to justify turning the expansion into a waiting lobby story-wise and even more so to do so in preparation for an explosion we won't get as it seems the plot ends up pivoting to the Light and now to fel-adjacent trolls five minutes later anyway.

The original TWW plot, with its natural endpoint in Harandar against whatever old god thing was on the mural and then leading likely into Dimensius next patch as people discussed up top is a more natural and logical story.

[allegrian]

I think the root cause of the Black blood goes way deeper in the earth than where the rootlands were if we based it solely on the roots in the ceiling of the Hallowfall/Azj-kahet tunnel being where Harandar originally was.

Black Blood is below the Palace and I'm pretty sure it goes deeper than that if memory serves based on drop offs visible in the distance (or I could be mixing it up with Excavation Site 9 delve which is vertically higher than the Palace...).

It doesn't matter as it's a dropped plot thread.

[Ersula]

It doesn't matter as it's a dropped plot thread.

I don't think it's a completely dropped thread. I think its what inspired the Saga. Metzen heard old god blood and immediately thought of Northrend. The Last Titan.

[Vakir]

WoD, aka the "Warcraft movie side piece" xpac.

A tie-in so bad that the producers involved left.

At least the Gul'dan staff from logging in was rad.

Re: dropped points or potentially dropped at least, I'm bummed out at that mural likely being less important. It actually looked really dope and had a lot of mystery to it. Reminded me a lot of the FMA Ruins of Xerxes mural where there's that vibe of "This is definitely something important but I can't tell what."